I’ve always hated drivatars for several reasons: horrible driving lines, random braking, shoving me off the road, ramming me from behind in breaking zones, etc. I was playing this afternoon and I was running it through my mind and I realized the reason why all drivatars are ruining forza.
The vast majority of players don’t race properly and if drivatars are programmed to reflect that then it becomes a domino effect. Crappy drivers drive badly, their drivatars drive badly and sporadically, their drivatars’ unpredictable driving causes drivers that are normally talented to drive sporadically, and then the talented drivers’ drivatars will also drive horribly.
Is it just me or are all drivatars doomed to driving like clowns?
Seems like they are. I try so hard to race clean, but then I get smashed in the back by a drivatar which messes up my Clean Start (I don’t race online, I just do the single player stuff with the occasional showdown at a meet). Could be just my perception, but when I raised the skill of the drivatars, it felt like it happened less.
It really depends on what your settings for drivatars are.
In free-roam, the sporadic behavior is intentional. You will find drivatars racing each other, but the rest of them are tooting around the map in same fashion you are. In an attempt to replicate it, they included them going offroad and cruising, which means their lines will sometimes go into the woods and sometimes just follow the curve in a rather average fashion.
However if you do choose to stop in the road and wait (and have AI set to at least normal levels) you can actually observe how much most of them will go to avoid hitting you. It’s something you can observe for yourself, the coding for collision avoidance/predicting your driving is definitely there.
Obviously they can’t predict how you will drive to a ‘T’ as AI can’t know that you are going to stop mid-race and do donuts or race in reverse, but it’s nice to actually test how they react to things.
Actually, with the last update to this game the Studio made the drivatars way more aggressive than before. I recognized their extreme bellicose behavior soon after the update when they started diving for positions and knocking you out of the way and making moves to side-swipe upon approach from behind. No problem, I adapted immediately!!!